In Moonset, I am indulging in something that I've wanted to do for a long time but have never had the patience or courage to try. I am starting each chapter with a quote from Shakespeare- and naming the chapter from that quote. It's actually amazingly fun, and as a Lit major, gives me enormous satisfaction.
So for Equinox (which is my solitary endevor at a sequal) I have decided to do something similar. There's a differance, however. With Moonset, Shakespeare worked well because he covers so many of our themes...creation, beginnings, right and wrong, passions, danger, adventure...pretty much anything I need I can find in Shakespeare.
Equinox is more focused in scope, however. Whereas Moonset deals with all sorts of loves (brother/sister, romantic, friendship), Equinox is much more of a romance. So in honor of this, I have picked four classic female writers who are known for dealing with the subject of romance. I thought I'd share with you some of the gems I found...
Chapter Quotes
“My beauty you had early withstood…Now be sincere. Did you admire me for my impertinence?”
“For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
Jane Austen
The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
Emma
“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;-- it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
Jane Austen quote
“Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.”
Jane Austen quote (Pride and Prejudice)
“All the privilege I claim for my own sex . . . is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
Jane Austen quote
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.
Persuasion (1817)
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
Mansfield Park (1814)
Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.—It depends upon the character of those who handle it. (Emma)
Charlotte Bronte quotes
“Reader, I married him.”
~Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.
Jane Eyre(Ch. 4)
If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. (Jane Eyre)
And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first it recoiled baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood — the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth: and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos. (Jane Eyre)
I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me. (Jane Eyre)
My bride is here... because my equal is here, and my likeness. (Jane Eyre)
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. (Jane Eyre)
I can but die... and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence. (Jane Eyre)
The following are Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights)
I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
…he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same
Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.
Should there be danger of such an event — should he be the cause of adding a single more trouble to her existence — Why, I think, I shall be justified in going to extremes!
Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
And lastly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (whom my character is actually *named after*)
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,Ere the sorrow comes with years?They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—And that cannot stop their tears.
The Cry of the Children, st. 1 (1844)
"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight,
Will not look the same by day.
The Lady's Yes, st. 1 (1844)
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past -
Oh, never call it loving!
A Woman's Shortcomings, st. 5 (1850)
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point,--what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented?
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. (Sonnets from the Portuguese)
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in't. (Aurora Leigh)
Grief may be joy misunderstood;
Only the Good discerns the good.
I trust Thee while my days go on. (De Profundis)
Who knows what will end up in the final book? But I'm having fun compiling them...
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